The Low Road

Personal Information
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vJFqTGS0vC3pASoYVE_2fxZg_3d_3d

News Editing Demographics
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=gc2TK5laKng6GH0iiTgMBg_3d_3d

News Consumption
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=2DQuHlbsqmmh_2f0W4LwMhNA_3d_3d

Online News Habits
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=gk_2f_2bUNeQpxwnpJ7SZ_2b5ZZw_3d_3d

Other Online Activities
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=FhGn_2fc7BrsnHGOG_2bh6L98w_3d_3d

Tech Savvy
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=OWJxPGBv7wZ1WK3Dhyqdkw_3d_3d

News Quiz
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=FU9cEv7FJFIsoqeenGCW_2fA_3d_3d

This is The Low Road

San Francisco’s cycling community learns how to make city politics work for it. All those hills are making them strong.

THIS IS IT!!!

I’ll admit: I’m a little behind the curve on the technical end. I don’t even have DreamWeaver or Flash software, and my HTML is pretty weak. But I wanted to finish the semester with my project up on a working Web site rather than a PowerPoint presentation. Earlier this semester I worked out a relatively easy way to do this on a WordPress blog, so I thought I’d post it here in case anyone else was struggling.

A method for creating interactive blogs for ICM 506 projects:

Go to DASHBOARD

Under “WRITE” select “WRITE PAGE” (not “WRITE POST” — pages are different!)

Write a new page for each page of your project and publish it. Tabbed browsing will keep you from going insane — sorry IE users. Make sure put the page number in the title or somewhere else so you can keep track of them.

When you are done, select “MANAGE PAGES” and select “EDIT” for each page of your project, in order. Use tabbed browsing to keep this manageable (sorry IE users).

Open MANAGE PAGES in a separate window (so you can toggle between them). Again using tabs, select “VIEW” to open each page of your project in order.

OK. You now should have two windows open, one with all of your pages in “edit” mode and one in “view” mode, showing all of the pages themselves.

One housekeeping task before you get started: In the edit window, go from window to window and uncheck “allow comments” and “allow pings” so you don’t have people commenting and pinging on every page. You might choose to keep them on the final page.

Now you need to create the “NEXT” and “BACK” buttons. (Don’t bother plugging in text — it’ll be easy once you get the formatting done.) Here’s where it pays off to be able to toggle between the edit and view windows.

Go to the first page in edit mode. Since this is the first page, you only need a NEXT button. Type NEXT and then toggle over to view; copy the URL for page 2, return to edit mode and link NEXT to that URL.

Move on to page 2. Here you’ll need a BACK and NEXT button, so you need to go to view mode, select the URL for page one, link it to BACK, then link page 3 to NEXT.

Continue the process for each page of your blog. (Don’t forget, you don’t need a NEXT button on the last page.) It’s laborious, but it works. Be sure to check that the links all work the way they’re supposed to.

With a little experimentation, you can do all sorts of things using this method. If you’re really masochistic, you can display the page numbers, linking each number to the appropriate page: 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.12. I tried this but gave it up as too labor intensive.

You can also add a HOME link, sending the reader back to the main blog.

MORE TIPS:
* Even if your quiz isn’t interactive, you can make it functional. Post the questions on one page, and create another one for the answers.

Note: This is an expanded version of a post that ran on this blog in January.

Part I: A Street Encounter

It happened about a year ago as David Streever was bicycling home from his regular workout in New Haven, Conn.

“I was surprised by a young assailant who rushed me, grabbed for my duffel bag … and then tried to punch me,” recalls Streever, a Web developer who is active with a local cycling group.

He was caught off-guard but managed to evade the punch. Thinking, “Hey, take my dirty hakama,” Streever did what came naturally: He drew the bamboo kendo sword he’d just been using in his martial arts practice and brandished it as a weapon.

It wasn’t the reaction the assailant had expected.

“He jumped back in surprise and backed off, then told me to bike away quick, because his friends were ‘gonna get me,’ or something similarly inane. Sure,” says Streever, who recounted the episode on the Elm City Cycling message board. “I biked away, giving him the evil eye, and dialed 911.”

Urban cyclists in New Haven and elsewhere face dangers, pitfalls and concerns that set them apart from their rural brethren who ply Connecticut’s bucolic backroads.

READ MORE >>

Learn more about New Haven’s cyclists: “A Cycling Community is Born“

– Washington Post photo

Paris gets serious about cycling, introducing a system of low-cost rental bikes as a greener alternative to urban transit. Each bike comes with a handlebar, basket and bell. But where does the ashtray go?

*Once again, we are indebted to our astute friends at Elm City Cycling for bringing this to our attention.*

Bikesummer is coming.

I’m scheduled for surgery on Thursday, March 15 to have my ACL reconstructed. This will be followed by a recovery period of about six months. I don’t mind being cut up, but I’m not looking forward to being a gimp for months on end (although I should be able to resume cycling in some form after a couple of months). So I was hoping I might coax some cyclists who’ve been through this before to post and tell me how they incorporated cycling into their recovery.